Hot on the heels of Baseball America doing the same, MLB Pipeline boys re-did their top 100 and slightly changed their top 30 for the Nats. Here’s a quick post talking about their changes and why.
Here’s the new MLBPipeline top 100 (with Wood now ranked #5 overall) and here’s a link to the current state of the Nats top 30. I won’t repeat the top 30 here in table format, but i’ll go over what’s changed.
- Flipped Wood and Crews at the top. No surprise here, just recognition that Wood has basically “solved” AAA so far while Crews continues to struggle in AA. Crew’s numbers have improved so far in May (.269/.375/.615), so that’s good.
- For those clamoring for Wood to get promoted … who do you sit? That’s the real problem with the makeup of the MLB roster right now. Winker has cooled a bit but still has a 117 OPS+ playing in LF, and you need him to retain value in trade. Young’s been great in CF and it’d make no sense to sit him. I don’t think you can cut bait on Rosario yet, and Robles is now back and needs playing time too. Meneses is 1B/DH and may have already been let go if Gallo wasn’t hurt. So, who sits? Robles? do you cut Meneses and DH Wood full time? Well that makes no sense either. Honestly, we need an injury or a trade.
- Morales and Cavalli swap spots at 4/5. I guess they’re hedging on how long it’s taken Cavalli to come back. Remember, Cavalli was routinely in the top 50-60 of all of the minors at the beginning of 2023 (including #58 in MLBPipeline’s rankings pre TJ).
- MLB Pipeline has now “graduated” both Jacob Young and Nasim Nunez, ranked 18th and 19th respectively earlier this year. Young was graduated out on ABs in April, while Nunez is now graduated by virtue of Service Time thanks to being on the big league roster more than 45 days.
- The two graduations left two spots open at #29 and #30; those have been filled with Armando Cruz and Andry Lara. These two are more than reasonable additions at this juncture. The highest ranked guys I have not on their list are Quintana (who’s hitting .192 this year so far) and Andrew Alvarez (who doesn’t scream “prospect” based on his stuff).
- They did not modify Lipscomb or Parker’s rankings despite MLB success, indicating this was really just a quick peek at the top of each team’s list to make slight adjustments.
We still wait for Fangraphs Nats top XXX for 2024, which came out in June last year. Eric Longenhagen always has a unique take on prospects and we’ll give that the full writeup when it comes out. He’s already releasting teams so perhaps we’re going to be last alphabetically.